Bad As I Wanna Be

Wealthy people are much more likely to get their pilot's license. How many believe that a moral license goes along with that?

Here's a question that comes up a lot: are the rich less ethical than the rest of us? Or as one Times writer put it, are they "differently moral"? Charles Saatchi did no favors for his running buddies at a Mayfair restaurant last month, where, in full view of other diners and one enterprising photographer on hand to immortalize the moment, he repeatedly took his lovely wife, the peaches-and-cream celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, by the neck then pushed her nose up in a piggy gesture. (That's the couple, above, at the same joint, in better days.) In the aftermath of this obloquy, he nailed down boor-of-the-month honors by citing her subsequent failure to defend him to the press as a huge factor in his decision to seek divorce. But setting aside Saatchi and his $100 million net worth for a moment, the question remains: are the rich "differently moral"?

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One recent study suggests that no one should expect sainthood and vast fortune in the same package (in fairness, it should be noted that two of the three authors of this study teach at Berkeley). The scientists posed a famous ethical dilemma called the Trolley Problem (if the only way to save the lives of five railroad workers involved pushing a fat man in front of a runaway trolley to his certain death, could you do it?) and found that wealthy respondents were more willing to sacrifice a single hefty life for five, a choice that poorer participants in the study said they could not stomach. This led the professors, the Dickensian trio of Côté, Piff, and Willer, to conclude that the wealthy are less empathetic, and that this may not necessarily be a bad thing, since their condition allows them to be more strategic in moral dilemmas. The result: the rich were more likely to act decisively for the greater good. A corollary: they don't necessarily feel good about it, but do it anyway.

Another study, by Piff and friends, tested whether the wealthy (as determined by the fanciness of their cars) were more or less likely to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk, as required by California vehicle code. Not surprisingly, the better the car, the less likely it was to yield. In an illuminating side note—observed in the study but not included in the statistical analysis—Prius drivers proved especially willing to barge ahead, claiming the right of way over pedestrians at the same rate as luxury vehicles, a finding that suggests that the self-righteous rival even the wealthy in grabbiness.

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